


see the man but not the light

by Kayndred



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Not Human, Alternate Universe - Not Related, Balance AU, Demon Sam Winchester, Different earth, Good versus Evil, Tentatively named, where the war is a game of sacrifices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: In the battle for total dominion over the mortal souls of Earth, there are rules. Castiel, recent transplant to the earthly host, meets the newest addition to Hell's legion.“Well,” the archangel groans, standing abruptly, glitter and confetti and crumbs falling from his shoulders. None of it clings to them like it does to the humans. “C’mon, Cassey, lets get a’huntin’.”And so they go.
Kudos: 2





	see the man but not the light

The night is warm and riotous, full of laughter, joy, calling voices raised over the din of dancing, the minstrels and the choir. Wine flows freely, as do joyous tears, bubbling along with the lilting tunes, trailing sparklers, diminished rains of confetti, wilting ribbons, trampled flowers, torn crepe, flickering lights, clinging glitter and discarded cups. Clumps of partiers drift to and fro around the swirling knots of dancing people at the center of the court yard.

From the shadows, curtained by dragging tinsel decor, untouched cup in hand, hidden from the glazed attentions of the humans by dint of his Grace, stood Castiel. There were enough Seeing eyes in the crowd that the cup was a necessary disguise. He wasn’t even the only angel in attendance, although he’d lost sight of Gabriel in the crush, and Balthazar had given a jaunty salute before vanishing from all sight.

It wasn’t every day that a new player was summoned to balance the scale of the world. The last had been Castiel himself, and more than a few Princes had been sacrificed to make way for this one, and all the Host in Heaven and on Earth had been girding themselves for its arrival. 

At last the dance begins to change, the humans falling into concentric circles that skip and shift and sway, the stone dais at the center catching their shivering shadows on its cracked face.

It doesn’t take long for the rhythm of the spectacle to resolve itself, for the rings to begin to move with intention, purpose, feeling. Dancers move from circle to circle seamlessly, navigating the littered earth with a surety Castiel finds impressive given the crowd’s overall state of inebriation.

The power begins gathering almost immediately. Red tendrils of smoke creep from the tree line toward the dais, between legs and over feet, building out from the center, spinning slowly. The song of creation in the gathered people rises, falls, aligns itself into one keening tone that makes Castiel’s teeth ache. He has a brief moment to consider if his own arrival had been similarly extravagant, when the smoke pulses, shooting up into the sky, golden fire and arcs of green lightning crackling within. All the trees bend their crowns toward it, straining, straining -

\- the air vanishes with a crack, the pillar imploding, solidifying into a monolith void. Blue white cracks appear in incomprehensible fissures across its surface.

First, one great membranous wing extends, then the other. Beyond the physical, Castiel can see the numerous flaming wings, the rainbow of scanning eyes, the spinning rings with their runes dripping golden fire. The being’s tail is coiled at its ‘base’, as though it rests upon the earth, thick and sinuous even as he makes out the shifting, vertebral spines, the shuffling feathers. Two of the being’s wings are folded within that coil, the lids of the cosmos eyes closed. Only two of its arms are revealed, pale and shining, and Castiel forgets, for a moment, that the humans cannot See as he can, for surely there would be more open weeping at the horrible beauty before them.

Instead they cry out at the image of a tall figure, bat-winged, dark haired, naked. Their eyes, the luminescent yellow of a lion’s, shine out upon the groveling crowd.

They raise clawed hands, darkened to the elbow with ash, and the clearing falls silent.

“Be still,” rings the low, smooth voice from the pillar of a person at the center of the dais. “And know that you have worked your wonders.”

And then, with a snap that leaves Castiel breathless, they are gone.

“Maybe they didn’t like the party,” Gabriel muses from his insouciant lounge on a cluttered park bench. The human mob moves around them, cleaning in the fresh morning light. 

“It didn’t look like it wanted to be here at all,” Balthazar says around a mouthful of stale popcorn. Castiel, hands empty, surveys the milling crowd. “Wrapped up in his wings tighter than Uriel in an ion storm.”

“And that ‘ _know that you have worked your wonders_ ’? Not exactly Azazel at the podium.” 

A human woman circles their table, unseeing, spearing stray bits of paper and collapsed ‘solo’ cups. There are drifts of them, and they are sold in packages - Gabriel will not attempt explaining it to him again. 

“Well,” the archangel groans, standing abruptly, glitter and confetti and crumbs falling from his shoulders. None of it clings to them like it does to the humans. “C’mon, Cassey, lets get a’huntin’.”

And so they go.

The newly summoned demon is not at any of the regular sites of revelry, or the battlefields, or any of the offices of the myriad politicians of the world. It was as though they had vanished. 

“That is not possible,” Castiel says following the seventh such proclamation from Gabriel, who had taken to slurping obnoxiously on something called a ‘unicorn frappuccino’, despite being outrageously pink and purple and containing no unicorn. “Now that they are present they cannot leave, and no summoned demon can commit suicide.”

Gabriel flexes in irritation, wings and Grace bristling in fractals that flatten the grass along the sidewalk and send fallen leaves scattering around them.

“Thanks for the history lesson, baby bro, I had _no idea_.” The flourish of his eye roll makes Castiel frown. Gabriel is Earth’s archangel, the most inundated with human knowledge and the most familiar with the infinite machinations of the Host and Pit on Earth. His knowledge is incredible. 

Castiel can’t say the same of his attitude.

“Perhaps he is sewing chaos in a different manner,” he suggests. They, the contingent of Earth, had theorized that Hell was making a bid for a greater player when droves of soldier and command demons had started being recalled. When three Princes had joined the multitude of returning ranks, Michael had shored Heaven’s limited resources into summoning Castiel and Anael to the field, likely under with the strategy that if the balance couldn’t be maintained through power, the number of the Host would work against Hell’s newly depleted presence on Earth. It was not unreasonable to think that this entity would not follow the footsteps of lesser predecessors. 

Gabriel stops so abruptly that Castiel almost runs into him. His elder brother is looking at him with consideration, his many eyes blinking before swinging round to surveil the Earth.

“He had no buddies at the shindig,” Gabriel says, and Castiel can almost hear the lightning of his thoughts. “He’s their big money maker but they had to pull a lot of the backup dancers to get him on the stage.”

That - it’s mostly incomprehensible, but Castiel can parse it enough to follow. 

“He’s looking for them,” says Castiel, realization dawning across them both. 

Gabriel claps a hand on his shoulder hard enough to stagger him, grinning with all his teeth. 

“Come on, Lassie, lets find our Timmy.”

Their ‘Timmy’, surprisingly, is dug into a student cafe at the closest university, dressed forgettably and possessing an untouched cup of coffee. Gabriel spots him first, scouring the the aether inch by pinprickling inch, but it’s Castiel who is sent to investigate.

“Hey, hey, think of it this way - you get more human exposure and can confront him on neutral ground. Plus,” he preens with a jaunty twitch of his shoulders, feathers rustling, “we can’t just throw the big guns in the ring first, we need the element of surprise.”

Castiel was fairly sure that surprise was not on the human periodic table of elements or the overall elemental makeup of existence, but he understood the spirit of his brother’s assurance. 

So he wades into the fray, dodging belligerent students wielding coffee and laptops and notebooks stuffed with loose leaf paper. The table around the new summon is conspicuously empty, but Castiel still approaches from the opposite side of the table anyway, using the distance of the table as negotiable space. 

“I thought it was tradition that we meet with blades drawn,” the new demon says after several minutes of awkward stillness. More than one passing student has given Castiel looks of confused frustration while moving around him, but he refuses to sit. The demon, hair flopping over his brow, golden eyes narrow and cool, looks like any other overworked college student: there are dark smudges under his eyes, the shadow of a beard across his jaw, lips chapped from the chill. His dark hoodie is worn but not drab, and the laptop in front of him markless. He looks completely nondescript. 

“It is tradition,” Castiel allows, unsure how to proceed. He was expecting - something different. “You left the field.”

“I did.”

And that, for the next fort-five minutes, is that.

Castiel eventually sits.

⧂

They don’t fight that day, even after the demon rises from the table hours and hours later, laptop in hand and coffee cold, and glances down at Castiel with something like curiosity and speculation on his face. 

“See you around, I guess,” he says, shuffling and awkward, obvious about how little his human shape fits. Castiel sits at the table for several more long moments, contemplating the less than companionable but not hostile silence of their encounter.

 _So?_ Gabriel’s voice rings, whisper loud in his mind, rising above the susurrus of the Earthly choir. _Gain any knowledge, padawan?_

_He does not like this coffee._

_Cas!_

**Author's Note:**

> Back when me and my bf were watching SPN to catch up, I popped this out. I like the idea, I like the language, I'm not sure where I'd go with it. But here it is! Originally titled 'some other metal than earth' from Much Ado About Nothing, but then I got my hands on my copy of Richard Siken's War of the Foxes, and I liked this line better.


End file.
